


Why they call me that, I do not know

by Missa_Kylea



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Blood, Hanahaki Disease, Implied Zemyx, M/M, Not Canon Compliant KH3, Post KH DDD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22560472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missa_Kylea/pseuds/Missa_Kylea
Summary: They called it Hanahaki disease, after the flowers that grew as it progressed. Those who suffered were both pitied and respected in turns: for their unwavering devotion to their love, and how that same devotion would be their death.
Relationships: Akuroku, Axel/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Why they call me that, I do not know

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sure nobody who is in this part of the fandom has any issues with all of this, but I’ve always thought that Axel was an older teen, and that nothing romantic happened between them before Roxas went back to Sora. *Shrugs*
> 
> Axel's flowers are red Dogwood: Rebirth and resurrection, Pity and regret over a specific decision or a situation that was beyond your control, Durability and reliability, Strength and resilience, A signal of affection to someone who may not reciprocate it
> 
> Also! I'm sorry I'm posting another Wip instead of the next Growing Pains chapter but it's lost on my broken laptop at the moment and I had this one mostly written and saved on a USB so I thought I'd finish and post it. I will get back to it as soon as my laptop is fixed!
> 
> Now if you are still interested in reading this after my massive author’s note, once again, I apologise for my love of commas. I’ll shut up now.

Axel had heard about the legend of the paopu fruit. It was on a recon mission to Destiny Islands to find out more about the keyblade bearer after Roxas had disappeared, and where he would later return to steal Kairi away. At the time Axel felt an echo of some forlorn emotion, but he had dismissed it and allowed rage and darkness to swallow him up again. Axel didn’t have time for fairy tale nonsense. He needed to find Roxas.

Back on his home world they had their own fairy tale nonsense that bound people together, but even a place called Radiant Garden wasn’t as full of sunshine and rainbows as the Islands. No, the connection that bound the people of Radiant Garden together was more tangible, and much more bittersweet.  
Lea had woken in the lab of Ansem’s castle along with the apprentices and barely had enough time to notice his bare face in the glass before he felt his chest seize. He started choking as he found his heart -his heart, Gods, Sora did it- start to beat rapidly. He pulled a tattered, spit covered petal from his mouth and stared at it. At first he thought it was covered in blood but that was just the colour. Oh no. He just could not catch a break. ‘Well, if this doesn’t kill me, the irony will,’ Lea thought to himself, half hysterically. Gods, he really had all the luck. 

* * *

They called it Hanahaki disease, after the flowers that grew as it progressed. Those who suffered were both pitied and respected in turns: for their unwavering devotion to their love, and how that same devotion would be their death. It was a curse -a type of heart magic- cast on Radiant Garden back during the age of fairytales.

“People would come begging Ansem to help them -- even those who didn’t know we were researching hearts.” Ienzo paused, then looked at Lea curiously. “Did you have this before you lost your heart? Is this why you and Isa wanted to be apprentices?” Lea choked. “No! We were just idiot kids, looking for one of our friends.” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I definitely wasn’t pining after anyone before all this.” “Hmmm, its almost a pity,” Ienzo shrugged at Lea’s incredulous look. “It had occurred to Zexion after we became nobodies that that might have well, maybe not cured, but temporarily stopped the curse since we didn’t have any hearts. But since this is apparently a new development--” Ienzo suddenly ducked behind his hair, as if that was going to hide the amusement in his voice, “If anyone was going to contract Hanahaki Disease while being literally heartless, it was either going to be you or IX.” Lea winced, remembering Demyx’s insistence on their already having hearts, and how he acted after Axel alone came back from Castle Oblivion. Lea really owed him an apology. Ienzo too, but he seemed happy enough to be recompleted and hadn’t said anything regarding the circumstances of that happening since they woke up. Maybe Lea would leave it for now. “Well, this isn’t Dem’s home world, right? He should be fine even if he comes here when he wakes up.”  
“Do you think he would?” Ienzo tilted his head like a confused puppy. It was adorable, and mildly alarming. Zexion had not been cute by any means, but then maybe Lea was the wrong person to ask. He also didn’t really know what to say now. If Zexion had never noticed that the other organisation members knew to look for Demyx in the vicinity of where he himself was expected to be, Lea wasn’t going to tell Ienzo now.  
“He might.” Lea shrugged, hoping it looked casual, “He knew that the original six members were from here at least, and if he woke up on his home world, he might come here looking for answers.”  
“That’s true. I’ll keep an eye out. What are you going to do now?”  
Lea thought about it. He already knew what was wrong with him, and everyone in Radiant Garden knew what could, or in this case, couldn’t be done about it. Maybe Lea could consider this as proof that Roxas still existed somewhere? Probably not. His own feelings were causing the illness, not Roxas’ presence, or lack thereof.  
Looking around the room where they’d woken up earlier, Lea sighed. Why did he always get stuck with the icky jobs?  
“Well, I have no idea where Demyx could have got to, but Braig and Isa definitely should have turned up here with us. Guess I’ll have to go look for them.”

* * *

After that whole showdown where multiple versions of his former boss (what in the hell) tried to turn Sora into another version of himself (themselves? Lea didn’t know), Lea lasted about two days in the Tower before everyone found out about him and his … flower problem.  
Yen Sid had gathered everyone involved in the rescue mission, as well as Kairi, Donald, and Goofy, to brief them on what was known about Xehanort’s plan, and what they would need to go about stopping him. He had just announced that he wanted both Kairi and Lea to be part of their ‘seven lights’ and Lea was desperately trying to ignore the side eyes he was getting in response from certain animals in the room. Lea really didn’t think he was qualified to fight on the light side, given that until recently he’d been a literal embodiment of darkness, and was only here for selfish reasons.  
Unfortunately for Lea, just thinking about his reason for being there was enough to make his still fragile heart ache. His chest was squeezed and his throat burned with blood and thorns. Half the room was already looking in his direction to see his reaction to Yen Sid’s words, and the rest turned as he suddenly heaved. Lea cursed his excessive height (or everyone else’s lack of) as even bent over, they all had a clear view of the bile and tattered (damning) petals that escaped between his fingers onto the floor.  
A chorus of concerned cries of ‘Axel’ rang out around the room and Lea really hated this entire group and their inherent goodness. They really thought he could be a part of all their light? Rescuing Sora -and spiting his ex-boss at the same time- was one thing, but this?  
He caught Riku’s gaze as he straightened back up, wiping his mouth. Even he looked worried, damn him, but if Riku was good enough for this side, then maybe he could be too. Hell maybe if Lea could do this, Roxas would be… nope! Lea managed to contain it this time. He swallowed and gave all of them a huge grin.  
“The name’s Lea, got it memorized? And sure, let’s do this.”

* * *

It had taken a bit more grandstanding to convince Sora he wasn’t dying (right then at least) but then Yen Sid had decided to ignore that he might have wanted to keep the curse to himself. The old wizard expounded at length about the magical nature of the curse, and it was admittedly more than the residents of Radiant Garden had figured out.  
According to Yen Sid, it seemed that the curse latched onto a connection between two hearts, and then grew in accordance with the amount of ‘pain’ any unrequited romantic feelings caused the victim. This explanation caused two very interesting things to happen: one, Yen Sid and any other naysayers were forced to accept that Roxas must have a heart. It was petty, but Riku’s guilty expression while listening to that made Lea feel slightly vindicated.  
The second was that something about seeing him literally choke on his feelings made everyone suddenly able to remember his name properly and (mostly) forgive his actions as Axel. It would seem too much like pity for his liking if everyone wasn’t so damn friendly and earnest about it.  
Yen Sid concluded that Roxas’ heart must be sleeping inside Sora alongside the others, and now that Lea’s heart was complete, the connection existed enough for the curse to prey on it. However, that meant even if Roxas did feel the same way, he couldn’t confirm it on his end and get rid of the curse. Sometimes, Lea thought, he really had the worst luck.  
On the other hand, since Roxas’s heart was sleeping, it wasn’t going around strengthening its connections to any other hearts, and that meant that there was no ‘rejection’ for the curse to feed off. So for the most part, Lea was generally fine. The only pain he had to worry about was what he was causing his heart with his own angst, and while that was a lot, he could still train with his keyblade and had most of his lung capacity so far.  
If Lea didn’t know exactly what he’d done to deserve this, he would have thought someone was out to get him. 

* * *

The first time Lea saw Ventus, he had been awake for a week and was solemnly listening to Yen Sid as he explained recent events to both him and Aqua in his study. Lea had avoided being there when they woke him up with the great excuse of being nowhere to be found the day they left. Axel hadn’t been able to remember, but Ven had been one of his friends. When Lea had recovered that memory and realised the implications, it had been a bad day.  
Lea would have loved to have been there to bring him home but given how fragile his newly restored heart was, he didn’t think he was ready to see him yet. If Lea had been worried and upset when Ven disappeared from Radiant Garden; Axel had been devasted by the loss of Roxas and bewildered by the fact he could feel that way. He was self-destructing from that moment, way before his actual fiery end.  
The extra time preparing to meet Ventus again didn’t help him in the end. As soon as he saw the serious expression on that face Lea’s heart surged in his chest. He lost himself in a daydream that the boy would turn and call for ‘Axel’. For a moment Lea could breathe deeply again only to immediately come crashing back down when Ventus turned to face him. The radiant grin and shouted, “Lea” shattered the illusion (even one he had already known was false) and with a strangled cry, Lea fell to his knees and heaved up an entire, perfectly formed flower in full bloom.  
There was a shocked silence before Aqua cast cura and Riku bustled him out of the office as he lost consciousness. Lea woke later that afternoon in his room and found someone had thoughtfully left the flower in a jar on his bedside table. Lea took a moment to examine it: Four petals, not bedraggled like the others so far, but with a slight curl to the edges; coloured a faded red like someone had painted it with a thick brush, with white towards the middle of the petal. The stamen was yellow, and Lea thought perhaps he’d seen them on a tree somewhere in Radiant Garden. While it wasn’t the sort of flower Lea had ever seen in a bouquet, and definitely not what he was expecting the embodiment of his tragic feelings to look like, he felt some kind of affinity for it, and was reluctant to burn this one like he had all the petals so far.  
Lea sighed, suddenly feeling weary. He had already died twice, and now here he was staring it down again. He could only hope having a heart was worth it, even if he couldn’t find Roxas before it was crushed under his feelings. Roxas had made Axel feel like he had one, and when it looked like Roxas really wasn’t coming back to fill that hole again, he had betrayed the Organisation and protected Sora, hoping to see a glimpse of Roxas at the end. But there wasn’t one. Only a boy with the same eyes, confused by Axel’s actions, and in the end Axel had to put his faith in there being a next life.  
Lea put the jar back on the bedside table, pushing it behind a couple of books so no one could see it from the doorway. He could only hope this counted as the next life, but either way he already knew how it would end. Lea knew what kind of atrocities he was capable of without a heart, so this time he would just have to make sure when it went, so did he. 

* * *

Lea didn’t see Ventus again. He and Aqua had gone looking for signs of Terra. Lea found this out from eavesdropping on King Mickey and Riku on his way to the kitchen. Apparently, while they did need to find Terra, Yen Sid was worried the disease would progress too much with Ventus around and so had sent them out immediately.  
“Can’t have that,” Lea spoke up suddenly, almost enjoying how both Riku and the king jumped at his appearance in the doorway. Looked like even with all their roaming in the dark, he still had an edge in the shadows. “If I go, the old man is gonna have to hope they find Terra in time.” His smirk was probably edging towards something nasty. “After all, I don’t know if the traditional cure is gonna be available to me, and I just don’t think the second option will work out in his favour somehow.”  
Neither Riku nor the king had a response to that. A potion could be made that burned out the plant as it grew around the heart and lungs, but it had the nasty side effect of cutting off your heart from being able to form any more connections with other people. Not the same as being a Nobody, except in the practical sense: you’d end up with about the same amount of feeling. The only Nobody able to draw a keyblade was Roxas, and it looked like he had been the special case that Axel had suspected he was all along. As for the traditional cure, well, even if Roxas had somehow fallen in love with Axel when he had no memories from his Somebody to tell him what that was, it would be too much to hope he still was after Axel had betrayed him. Having a fully-grown heart really put a lot of things in perspective, and honestly Lea was just hoping that when he found Roxas again, Roxas would at least forgive him, even if he choked to death on his feelings soon after.  
King Mickey tried to call after him as he stalked away, but Lea was done with all of them right now. He decided if he was going to be miserable, he might as well do it properly and go stare at the sunset. It was not to be however, for someone plopped down beside him not even ten minutes later. Hopefully Sora thought his eyes were watering from the sun.  
Sora obviously had no idea about the whole Ventus episode, otherwise he might have left well enough alone. Probably not though. Sora had yet to find a cause that he considered hopeless, even when everyone else did, and apparently today was Lea’s turn.  
“No one actually told me about Roxas until I saw Riku in the World That Never Was,” Sora said.  
Lea had been pointedly ignoring him since he sat down, but that made him whip his head around to look at Sora.  
“Yeah, yeah, you don’t have to say anything. I should have worked it out way before that. People had been talking about Roxas ever since I woke up, mostly other Nobodies, but I just didn’t realise. I was only a heartless for like, however long it took me to walk down all those stairs at Hollow Bastion, and then Kairi turned me back. I had no idea that Nobodies didn’t just go away when the heartless did.”  
“You weren’t exactly a normal case, you know,” Lea couldn’t help but interrupt here. “Despite what the names imply, Heartless have the heart and Nobodies have the body. Kairi being able to bring you back like that is pure light-side nonsense. Not that I’m complaining, otherwise all of us wouldn’t have been re-completed either, but still,” He waved his hands around, “this is all beyond me.”  
Sora seemed to consider this, then shrugged. “Well, you’re welcome, I guess.” He was quiet for a while, staring at the sunset.  
This whole encounter was starting to bug Lea. He’d never seen Sora be so goddamn still. If he turned his head just enough that Sora turned into a silhouette in the corner of his eye, he could almost pretend this was a different tower; a different person; an entirely different sunset. Another life. His breath caught as the cursed plant constricted his lungs, and Lea squeezed his eyes shut, trying to contain his longing. Yen Sid had had the audacity to tell Lea he was lucky.  
‘As Roxas’ heart is asleep, you only have your own actions to worry about, Lea. As long as you contain your feelings for him, the curse will not progress.’ Just thinking about the old man’s words made him spitting mad, and he was vaguely aware that his hands had started summoning flames.  
“Uh, Lea?” Looks like Sora had noticed too. It took a moment, but Lea managed to extinguish them. When he opened his eyes again Sora was staring at him like he’d just remembered something, and Lea cursed quietly inside his head. Although it wasn’t the plan, he’d hoped the earlier interruption had managed to derail whatever point Sora was working towards when he came up here. The way it was going, if Sora kept talking, he didn’t know how his heart would react. He regretted wishing Sora would stop being so Roxas-like earlier. Roxas might have gotten his blindness to social cues from Sora, but he had also spent a lot more time contemplating existence, than say, deliberately poking people’s sore spots.  
“You know, my heartless had been a shadow, so even if I did think my Nobody was still running around, there was no way I thought he was gonna be high ranking enough to be running around in the Organisation,” Sora continued his train of thought as if Lea hadn’t just had a mild breakdown in the middle of the conversation. “Anyway, my point is, I didn’t know about Roxas until just before I fought Xenmas with Riku. But even then I didn’t understand a lot of things until, well, until I saw him during my exam. He tried to tell me I needed to stop dreaming.”  
The mention of Roxas talking to Sora since he’d rejoined him made Lea perk up, but his brain reminded him that if it was good news Sora would have brought it up the day he found out about the curse.  
“He gave me all his memories, Axel. He’d been,” Sora hesitated, “Aware? For a while after he joined me and I woke up in that pod. I’d have strange reactions to people and places, but that all stopped after- after you saved me from those dusks.”  
Distantly, Lea was aware that he was crying again, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it anymore than he could ask Sora to stop talking. Sora himself was getting a bit choked up, but then he’d always been an emotional kid.  
“He actually fought me when I got to the World That Never Was. I didn’t understand what was happening, but afterwards, he uh, I’m pretty sure that’s when his heart went to sleep. I didn’t talk to him again until the exams, but Lea, Roxas wasn’t the same, more.. resigned? When I talked to him I tried to tell him he could be his own person, but he thought we couldn’t be separated again, and even if we could be...” The haunted look in those familiar eyes was killing Lea, but he could only wait for Sora to continue.  
“Axel, he saw you die. He thinks you’re still dead. He thinks no one is waiting for him anymore.”  
Lea was not prepared. Lea had been trying to brace himself ever since Sora started talking about Roxas. So much so that the implications hadn’t really hit him until just then.  
Roxas was waiting for the next life, while Lea was stuck here in this one, still wondering if he had another one.  
Lea’s heart was too damn fragile for this entire day. The plant in his chest squeezed all the air from his lungs, and the last thing he heard as he blacked out was Sora yelling as Lea pitched over the edge of the tower.


End file.
